Silverlight

Cynergy

http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/rickbarraza

Watermark Textbox

http://www.solutionbot.com/2010/06/02/silverlight-watermark-textbox/

Silent installation

http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/03/25/using-sllauncher-for-silent-install-silverlight-application.aspx

Duplex pooling

http://www.lightstreamer.com/demo/Silverlight_StockListDemo/

Comet

http://cometdaily.com/2009/10/23/concrete-comet-examples/

RIA & MVVM

http://wildermuth.com/2009/12/15/Architecting_Silverlight_4_with_RIA_Services_MEF_and_MVVM_-_Part_1

VS 2010 Binding Builder Feature

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wpfsldesigner/archive/2010/06/14/how-to-enable-using-the-binding-builder-in-wpf-and-silverlight-applications.aspx

Customize Splash Screen

1. Custom Loading Screens in Silverlight *** http://pagebrooks.com/archive/2009/02/19/custom-loading-screens-in-silverlight.aspx

2. SilverZine Tutorial - Splash screens and Loaders in Silverlight http://silverzine.com/tutorials/splash-screens-and-loaders-in-silverlight/

Bind ComboBox with DataGrid

ComboBox in DataGrid - Manish Dalal's blog *** http://weblogs.asp.net/manishdalal/archive/2008/09/28/combobox-in-datagrid.aspx

Defining Silverlight DataGrid Columns at Runtime - Scott Morrison - Site Home - MSDN Blogs ** http://blogs.msdn.com/b/scmorris/archive/2008/04/14/defining-silverlight-datagrid-columns-at-runtime.aspx

Custom Controls

Creating a Silverlight Custom Control (LinkLabel control)- The Basics http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/Creating-a-Silverlight-Custom-Control-The-Basics.aspx

Combo Box

Rapid Access Key Selector Behavior for ComboBox and ListBox *** http://gallery.expression.microsoft.com/en-us/RapidAccessKey

Use Styles for an editable Silverlight ComboBox **** http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/11/05/silverlight-editable-combobox-using-styles.aspx

Download details: Microsoft Expression Blend Software Development Kit (SDK) for Silverlight 4

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=d197f51a-de07-4edf- 9cba-1f1b4a22110d

Telerik Blogs > Server-side paging, sorting and filtering for your Silverlight DataGrid http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/posts/09-01-21/Server-side_paging_sorting_and_filtering_for_your_Silverlight_DataGrid.aspx

Telerik Recruiting Application

http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/posts/10-04-08/silverlight_recruiting_application_wrap-up_and_source_code.aspx

Expression Blend templates, Part 1 – Understanding templates http://expressioniq.com/?p=60

TED: Sunitha Krishnan fights sex slavery

Windows Vista:: how to delete failed mapped network drive?

NET USE * /delete will delete all network drives and printers. Replace the * with the full UNC path and share name to delete a specific connection to a share. A standard user may not have the rights to disconnect from a network share.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19451998-Vista-how-to-delete-failed-mapped-network-drive

Analysis Services:: Problem Starting SQL Server Analysis Services.

For those who are facing problem in Starting SQL Server Analysis Services, please follow the following steps to fix the issue.

Open Control Panel
Go to Regional and Language Options Locale Settings
Change the Format, Location and Administrative from English(India) to English(United States)
Restart the System
Once your system is Restarted open the Registry Editor (from Start = > Run => regedit)
Navigate to HKEY_USERS
Look for LSA entry @ S-1-5-18
Search for LocaleName
Update the following keys
Locale = 00000409
LocaleName = en-US
sCountry = United States
10. Open the SQL Server Configuration Manager, and start the SQL Server Analysis Services.

FYI: This is caused because Windows Vista is supporting en-IN whereas SQL Server 2005 does not provide support for en-IN, so if you try to run SQL Server Analysis Services it will give the following exception (can be found in Event Viewer)

The service cannot be started: Message-handling subsystem: The message manager for the default locale cannot be found. The locale will be changed to US English. Errors in the metadata manager. LOG file extension can be only .LOG. Message-handling subsystem: The message manager for the default locale cannot be found. The locale will be changed to US English. Message-handling subsystem: The message manager for the 16393 locale cannot be found. Internal error: Failed to generate a hash string.

http://dotnetslackers.com/Community/blogs/bmdayal/archive/2009/04/04/problem-starting-sql-server-analysis-services.aspx

Reporting Services:: Subscription Fail - The user or group name ‘Domain\User’ is not recognized

For any of you that work closely with Reporting Services, I am sure you can vouch that the system offers a great amount of flexibility and capability. At the same time though you also have probably encountered your fair share of strange, random and undocumented issues. One today I found happened with a Subscription.

Failed sending mail: The user or group name ‘Domain\UserNoMore’ is not recognized

Recently, we had a user leave the company. For the sake of this article we will happily refer to him as UserNoMore. When you create a subscription you are not propted to define an owner. You get the happy assignement automagically. When the user account is deactivated authentication ceases and emails and file archives begin to fail.

In my experience here it took a little finess and hackery to correct. Now let me first say I niether condone nore dismiss the need of making direct changes to data. So in this case after attempting any known fix or finding any interface I determined the fix would be in a bit of DML. Really the fix was pretty simple. Find the subscription, determine a different user to own, update the subscriptions. In this case I selected the service account for Reporting Services so I wouldn’t have to worry later (and I guess technically you could do this for all subscriptions if thats how you shop is set security wise).

In the ReportServer$InstanceName database for reporting services you will find 3 key tables:

Catalog – Reports, Folders and basically all Items
Subscriptions – The scheduled report processes
User – Well…any user or group in Reporting Services

Step 1- Get the Report ID in Question

SELECT ItemID, Name
FROM [ReportServer$InstanceName].[dbo].[Catalog]
WHERE [Name] =‘MonthlySalesReport’
and [Type] = 2 –Report Item Type

Step 2 – Find the Subscription

SELECT

[SubscriptionID],[OwnerID],[Report_OID]
FROM [ReportServer$InstanceName].[dbo].[Subscriptions]
WHERE [Report_OID] = ’1551AA5B-0FF1-494B-8725-73E22AA34D9F’

Step 3 – Select another User

SELECT [UserID],[UserName]
FROM [ReportServer$InstanceName].[dbo].[Users]
WHERE [UserName] = ‘Domain\RSServiceAccount’

Step 4 – Update the Subscription

UPDATE

[ReportServer$InstanceName].[dbo].[Subscriptions]
SET [OwnerID] = ’6BDB4964-EE28-4E96-BCB2-E4509FAC909B’
WHERE [OwnerID] = ’3D272CE2-A9B3-4B89-8993-C72E8D43A6EE’
AND [Report_OID] = ’1551AA5B-0FF1-494B-8725-73E22AA34D9F’

Really an easy fix…not clean but it worked for me. Feel free to provide feedback.

Enjoy!

http://speeddba.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/failed-sending-mail-the-user-or-group-name-domainuser-is-not-recognized/

Set permissions on SSRS

1. Run Sql Server Management Studio as Administrator (right click "Run as Administrator")
2. Connect to a Reporting Services server using Windows Authentication.
3. Right click Home, Select Properties, Select Permissions.
4. Click Add Group or User, Type your Username, Click Ok.
5. Check the box for Content Manager, Click Ok.

Now you can access Reporting Services via Sql Server Management Console without running as administrator.

You should also have permissions to browse Report Manager (http://localhost/Reports). If not, but you do see the Information Bar complaining then add http://localhost/ to Explorer's Trusted Sites Zone.

How to Disable Adobe Updater

1. Step
   1. 1

   Open "My Computer" by double-clicking on the desktop icon or clicking on the "Start" menu and selecting the "My Computer" button. Open the drive that contains your Adobe programs. By default, this is the "C" drive.

2. Step2

   Double-click on "Program Files" to view software files installed on your computer. Open the "Common Files" folder by double-clicking on the folder name.

3. Step3

   Locate the Adobe folder and double-click on it to open it. The Adobe folder contains files for all Adobe programs installed on your system. Locate and open the Adobe Updater folder, which will be named "Updater" followed by a version number, such as 5 or 6.

4. Step4

   Locate the executable file titled "Adobe Updater" within the "Updater" folder. Double-click the file to initiate the Adobe Updater application. The program will take a few moments to connect to the Internet to search for updates.

5. Step5

   After it finishes searching, a prompt window will appear to install new updates. Click "Preferences" on the left-hand side and uncheck the "Automatically check for Adobe updates" box. Click "OK" to accept the changes. Adobe Updater will not check for available updates unless manually instructed to do so.

   
   

http://www.ehow.com/how_5098323_disable-adobe-updater.html

SubSonic 2.x

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/SubsonicDAL.aspx

SQL Server:: VIEW in a VIEW

AVOID REUSING VIEW IN ANOTHER VIEW

Subsonic

SubSonic2

Work through

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/SubsonicDAL.aspx

SubSonic3

FAQ

http://subsonicproject.com/docs/SubSonic_3_Frequently_Asked_Questions

How to generate classes for Views

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1078311/sql-views-in-subsonic-3-0

Classes generated for View DO NOT work
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1299998/activerecord-and-gethashcode-fails-if-int-is-nullable

Detect asynchronous postback in ASP.NET | SharePoint 2010, SharePoint, C-sharp, ASP.Net, JQuery, SQL Server Solutions

Detect asynchronous postback in ASP.NET | SharePoint 2010, SharePoint, C-sharp, ASP.Net, JQuery, SQL Server Solutions

Java Script

Lesson 1
Lesson 2

SQL Server :: Storing Images and BLOB files

1. Insert BLOB 
   

   INSERT INTO BLOBTest (BLOBName, BLOBData)  
   

    SELECT 'First test file',    
   

     BulkColumn FROM OPENROWSET(Bulk 'C:\temp\nextup.jpg', SINGLE_BLOB) AS BLOB 
   

 

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mssql/article.php/3724556/Storing-Images-and-BLOB-files-in-SQL-Server-Part-2.htm

 

1. Export BLOB 
   

   bcp "select datei from Person.Address WHERE
   addressid=1 " queryout "c:\TestOut.doc" -T -n -Slocalhost\AdventureWorks
   

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic487470-338-1.aspx

IEBlog : Introducing IE=EmulateIE7

IEBlog : Introducing IE=EmulateIE7: ""

Where have all the good guys gone?

Pritish Nandy, 12 April 2010, 11:17 AM IST

I was born into a world without villains. The British had left India. We were a free nation. There were many heroes: Gandhi, Subhash Bose, Sri Aurobindo, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad, Ambedkar. Remarkable guys who fought, each in his own way to bring us freedom. A spanking new nation was about to be built. Everyone was excited. It was heady times; it felt great to be an Indian. All our other identities were subsumed.

Yes, there was a bloody Partition. Many had lost their homes and families. Some people were angry, very angry, but that anger was specific. It was directed at those responsible for the bloodshed. It was not free floating rage. No one in those days was stupid enough to confuse Pakistanis with Muslims or the British with Christians. Everyone was anxious to put the past behind and get on with the task of building a new India. Since I grew up in Kolkata I met many people, Hindus and Muslims, who had fled what was then East Pakistan. They were trying hard to rebuild their lives. The locals did not see them as unwelcome immigrants. Instead, they went out of their way to help them. I remember my mother giving her blouses to a refugee woman to embroider even though she could barely afford it on her meagre school teacher’s salary.

There was magic in the air, the magic of nation building. There were dreams that everyone dreamt, of creating a new India where we would all be Indians first. In our living room hung pictures of Rabindranath Tagore, Gandhi, Subhash Bose. My father would proudly tell me stories of the freedom struggle and politicians were then our biggest heroes. No, I never heard of a film star or a cricketer then. We spoke only about politicians and how they would change India. We believed in them. We admired them.

By the time I was in high school things had changed. People were burning buses and trams to protest against a one paisa ticket price rise. It wasn’t actually the price rise. It was free floating rage against being let down by the political class. When I joined college, the best students of my class vanished one day only to surface in Naxalbari fighting for what they saw as a just cause, the rights of the rural poor. I may not have agreed with them but like all young men of the time I believed in the good fight. Student politics in Europe was hotting up. Tariq Ali in England, Daniel Cohn-Bendit in Paris, Rudi Dutschke in Germany inspired the May uprising in Europe. Governments began to feel threatened by youth power. Che was the new idol and young people swore by his vision of a new world. But no, it didn’t take long for disenchantment to set in. Marxism became the God that failed.

It wasn’t only Marxism. Politics failed India. Pictures of politicians in the living rooms disappeared. We read about bloody clashes between political parties, religious groups, castes, communities. Regional issues reared their head. New conflicts emerged. We began to hear of crimes we had never heard before. Suddenly there were villains all around. People we began to hate, who were among us but not one of us. Politics became murky; we began to seek our heroes elsewhere. Actors became stars. So did writers, singers, journalists, sports people. Doctors, teachers, social workers were still respected. Some of them migrated to politics, won elections. But our world without villains had changed forever.

Today we live in a world where villains are everywhere. Politics has more than its share and even though everyone wants to be in politics, the reasons are different. Politics hardly offers nation building opportunities. It offers money, power, pelf. So do some other professions as well but politics is the shortest cut. That’s because at the heart of it lies all pervasive corruption. An honest politician today is as rare as the mountain quail that ornithologist Salim Ali spent his whole life searching for. When I began my life as a journalist, it was possible to expose a corrupt neta and see him sacked or punished. Today, if you expose a corrupt neta, you are more likely to get sacked yourself.

Then there are the other villains around us. Terrorists, extortionists, underworld syndicates, Maoists (often confused with the Naxalites of yore), the khaps who love to murder their own, suicide bombers fighting for lost causes, bigots who beat up young girls for drinking or wearing short dresses, fundamentalists constantly in search of new victims, regional groups who see other Indians as the enemy, book burners, art vandals, hackers, poachers who are wiping out entire animal species, corrupt Government officers, rogue policemen, environmental predators, fake drug manufacturers, the land mafia encroaching on public land in connivance with those who are supposed to protect it. The villains are everywhere, growing by the day. Where have the heroes gone? I often wonder. Where’s the India we once dreamt of?

64bit ODBC Driver

Scenario: Consume MySQL data in a report or in a SSIS package

- Install 64bit version of ODBC driver

- Create a User/System DSN on the machine

- Use the DSN in place of Buid Command

Run SQL Job from website on 64bit machine

Error: Problem with Microsoft.SqlServer.BatchParser.dll on Windows 64-bit

Post: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlsmoanddmo/thread/861b57bc-aa21-4b03-bd01-5c164e2bac4e

Download: SQLServer2005_XMO_x64.msi (pre req sql native client)

Permission to run SQL Job

1. Select database user

2. Go to database mapping

3. Select msdb database

4. look for privilege window below

5. Select all the rights related to SQL Agent

6. Save/Submit

SSIS Package on 64 bit machine

debugging

http://blogs.msdn.com/amitlale/archive/2007/12/11/ssis-64-bit-setting.aspx

For the SSIS packages that really don't make use of the 64-bit processor, the SSIS project property Run64BitRuntime can be set to False. This is a instruction to load 32-bit runtime environment rather than 64-bit, and your packages would still run without doing any plumbing work. The property can be found under SSIS Project Property Pages -> Configuration Properties -> Debugging.

Run as SQL Agent Job

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934653

JobType: Operating system (CmdExec).

Package Path: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\DTExec.exe" /FILE "" /MAXCONCURRENT " -1 " /CHECKPOINTING OFF

Other Links

http://bi-polar23.blogspot.com/2008/06/ssis-and-sql-server-agent-choosing.html

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic541317-148-1.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms141766.aspx

Your riot was worse than mine

http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/31/stories/2010033157731000.htm

When double standards take charge, it is the victims of communal violence who suffer, be they the Sikhs of Delhi, the Muslims of Gujarat or the Pandits of Kashmir.

India's polity has an unerring taste for the irrelevant. That is why the controversy over a sitting Chief Minister being summoned to answer questions about mass murder has made way for an unseemly debate about the morality of an ageing actor. After his embarrassing, nine-hour appearance before the Special Investigation Team, one would have thought Narendra Modi presented a large enough target. Instead, the Congress has chosen to launch a full-throated campaign against Amitabh Bachchan for choosing to become a brand ambassador for tourism in Mr. Modi's State. The party has accused the Bollywood superstar of being indifferent to allegations of State complicity in the massacre of Muslims which took place there in 2002. And it has started boycotting him in a manner that is as crude and mean-spirited as it is ineffective and pointless. Thanks to this, the mass media are today discussing Big B rather than the Little Men whose role the SIT is now investigating.

As can be expected, the Gujarat Chief Minister is thrilled. The spotlight which was earlier on him is now being trained elsewhere. Instead of being forced to rally others to his own defence, Mr. Modi has happily mounted the barricades on behalf of Mr. Bachchan. In keeping with his party's fondness for technology and Islamophobia, he has blogged that the actor's critics are ‘Talibans of untouchability'.

If Mr. Bachchan is guilty of overlooking mass violence today, it is because equally illustrious gentlemen, including some industrialists, did the same when they declared Mr. Modi prime ministerial material. For that matter, the actor himself has done this sort of thing before. In his movies, Mr. Bachchan was a crusader for the underdog. In real life, he is attracted to the kind of powerful men he once fought on the big screen. His fans have a right to feel cheated. Political parties, especially the Congress, do not have that right.

The party finds fault with him for representing Gujarat in the wake of 2002. But in 1984, barely weeks after the blood in the streets of Delhi had dried, the actor accepted a Congress ticket for Allahabad and got elected to Parliament. “As a brand ambassador does he endorse or condemn the mass murder in Gujarat?” Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari asked the other day, adding: “It is high time Amitabh Bachchan came out and said what his position on [the] Gujarat riots is.” Despite the party having ‘apologised' for its role in the massacre of Sikhs following Indira Gandhi's assassination, I doubt Mr. Tiwari or any other Congress spokesman will ever ask Mr. Bachchan what his position on the Delhi riots was or is.

But if the Congress prefers to forget the history of 1984, the BJP and its leaders act as if history ended that year. In their telling, 2002 either didn't happen or pales in comparison with what preceded it. And so begins the sordid exercise of weighing the suffering of victims and, worse, of playing the plight of one set against another. Mention the suffering of the Muslims of Gujarat and the BJP will start talking about the plight of the Pandits, driven by terrorism from their homes in the Kashmir Valley in 1989 and 1990. Try talking about the injustice done to the Sikhs of Delhi and the Congress will insist on speaking only of Gujarat. And the minute the microphones in the studio are switched off, the politicians are quite happy to forget about the shared travails of all victims.

The reality is that the Delhi and Gujarat massacres are part of the same excavated site, an integral part of the archaeology of the Indian state. Eighteen years separate 2002 from 1984. Eighteen is normally the age a human being is considered to have become an adult. Inhumanity also seems to take 18 years to fully mature. In an act of conception which lasted four bloody days, something inhuman was spawned on the streets of Delhi in 1984; by 2002, it had fully matured. Paternity for the ‘riot system' belongs to both the Congress and the BJP, even if the sangh parivar managed to improve upon the technologies of mass violence. Both knew how to mobilise mobs. Both knew how to get the police to turn the other way. Both knew how to fix criminal cases. Both knew what language to speak, even if one set of leaders spoke of a ‘big tree falling' and the other paraphrased Newton. Both had the luxury of not being asked difficult questions by criminal investigators. Until now.

There is one school of thought that Mr. Modi's summons and interrogation have come eight years too late. There is a lot of merit in that point of view. But the reality is that the call for a leader to render account for mass crimes committed on his watch comes 18 years too late. Veteran journalist Tavleen Singh said recently that if Rajiv Gandhi had been interrogated in 1984 about what happened to the Sikhs, Gujarat would not have happened. She is right. Had the courts and the entire edifice of the Indian state not failed the victims of 1984, many, many politicians, police officers and officials would have gone behind bars. Had that happened then, every leader would have been forced to think a hundred times about the legal consequences of instigating mass violence or allowing mobs to go on the rampage.

The debates on Mr. Modi over the past two weeks have been so incredibly divisive because neither the Congress nor the BJP is interested in a discussion on systemic remedies. Justice is about punishing individuals, rehabilitating victims and dismantling the infrastructure of communal terrorism. But our biggest parties want nothing to do with any of that. Gujarat 2002 should go unpunished because Delhi 1984 never saw justice, says the BJP. ‘No SIT ever interrogated Rajiv Gandhi so why is Mr. Modi now being interrogated?' is the party's self-serving refrain. On its part, the Congress is unwilling to incorporate in the draft Communal Violence Bill clear-cut legal provisions that could deter politicians and policemen from again abusing their power as they did in 1984 and 2002.

One of the questions the SIT was expected to ask Mr. Modi during his interrogation on March 27 was what exactly he said when Ehsan Jaffrey called him up on February 28, 2002, asking for help. The question is important because soon after the former MP put down the telephone, he was killed by a mob along with 58 other innocent people. I have no idea whether that question was put to Mr. Modi, let alone what his answer was. But when the same question was put to Jai Narayan Vyas, official spokesman of Mr. Modi's government, in a televised debate a few days ago, the answer was atrocious. Ehsan Jaffrey had been a Congress MP, said Mr. Vyas. “So I demand to know what the Congress party did to help him.”

There was, of course, nothing the Congress could have done to save the doomed member then. The BJP was in power in both Gujarat and the Centre. But the party has a chance to do something now: Pass a law with real teeth. It's been more than a quarter-of-a-century since a big tree came crashing down upon us. It is time for the earth to stop shaking.

True skill

By Paulo Coelho

The yogi Raman was a true master of the art of archery. One morning, he invited his favourite disciple to watch a display of his skill. The disciple had seen this more than a hundred times before, but he nevertheless obeyed his teacher. They went into the wood beside the monastery and when they reached a magnificent oak tree, Raman took a flower which he had tucked in his collar and placed it on one of the branches.

He then opened his bag and took out three objects: his splendid bow made of precious wood, an arrow and a white handkerchief embroidered with lilacs.

The yogi positioned himself one hundred paces from the spot where he had placed the flower. Facing his target, he asked his disciple to blindfold him with the embroidered handkerchief.

The disciple did as his teacher requested.

‘How often have you seen me practise the noble and ancient sport of archery?’ Raman asked him.

‘Every day,’ replied his disciple. ‘And you have always managed to hit the rose from three hundred paces away.’

With his eyes covered by the handkerchief, the yogi Raman placed his feet firmly on the ground, drew back the bowstring with all his might – aiming at the rose placed on one of the branches of the oak tree – and then released the arrow.

The arrow whistled through the air, but it did not even hit the tree, missing the target by an embarrassingly wide margin.

‘Did I hit it?’ said Raman, removing the handkerchief from his eyes.

‘No, you missed completely,’ replied the disciple. ‘I thought you were going to demonstrate to me the power of thought and your ability to perform magic.’

‘I have just taught you the most important lesson about the power of thought,’ replied Raman. ‘When you want something, concentrate only on that: no one will ever hit a target they cannot see.’

Find Success by Doing the Things You Dislike

As I think of the struggles many people go through, I am reminded of a powerful quote by Albert E. N. Gray:

The successful person has the habit of doing things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.

If you are someone who has to make important changes in your life, you may want to ponder on this idea. What are the things you know you have to do but are avoiding? If you were to discipline yourself and create a plan for doing those things, would you find positive, even breakthrough rewards?

In my case, I know when I’m trying to avoid doing something, I eventually see that I’ve paid an even higher price by avoidance. For example, when I’ve neglect my health by not eating right, exercising, or getting enough sleep because I find it hard to stick to a disciplined regiment, I have found myself feeling sluggish and not doing my best work. When I finally subordinate my dislikes to the strength of my purpose, things turn around.

Identify something you are avoiding and make a promise that you will do it. Make a promise and keep it. Subordinate the things you dislike doing to your greater purpose. The more you do this, the more strength you will build—and the more success you will find.

- Stephan Covey

Garfield - Bachlers

Garfield - Dunno

Power diet for quick weight loss RAVNEET KAUR

There is a famous saying that Health is Wealth and Healthy mind lives in a  healthy body.  But today most of the people find it difficult to reduce their weight and are becoming more prone to Blood Pressure, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes and the core reason behind this is Obesity.  In this fast moving life we do not get much time to spare for physical exercise so in such a situation a healthy and nutritious diet can solve the purpose.  Early Morning  Start your day with lemon juice and honey in lukewarm water; this helps your body to get rid of harmful acids produced by the body.  Breakfast  Choose any one or two from the following options  Egg white omelet (2) + 2 slices of brown bread,  Milk (Skimmed Milk) +Cornflakes/ Oats /Wheat bran  Fruit salad / Sprouts.  Vegetable Poha / Upma  Skimmed milk cottage cheese + Brown Bread  Pre Lunch  Take black coffee before the afternoon meal this helps in boosting metabolism.  Lunch  Boiled / Roasted Chicken/ Soyabean (200 grams) +Brown Rice (1/2 plate) / Chapatti (1)  Boiled Dal +salad + Brown Rice (1/2 plate) / Chapatti (1-2)  Take Probiotic curd (100grams) as it helps in digestion.  Vegetable Daliya  Evening  Take some citrus fruits to satisfy the hunger pangs in the evening,  Green tea with two Marie Lite biscuit  Boiled Channa  Dinner  Choose any one or two from the following options  Boiled Soybean Nutrela/ soup + salad,  Boiled Egg White (3) + Vegetable clear soup  Chicken or Tuna salad.  Boiled Dal  Vegetable Daliya  Pre Bed –time  150 -200 ml of skimmed milk.  Beside the above diet keep in mind the following points-  • Avoid heavy dinner; maintain at least 3 to 4 hours of gap between meal and sleep.  • Replace cold drinks with coconut water, vegetable soup or butter milk  • Drink at least 2 to 3 liters of water everyday  • Fibre is excellent for weight loss , so consume more of raw vegetables and fruits  • All carbs are not bad; avoid simple carbs like sugar, sweet and processed food.  • Never skip meals.  • Avoid Bakery products.  • Replace Chicken Tikka with Chicken Salami  • Avoid taking water along with the meal.  .  Follow the above mentioned points for 6 days in a week and once in a week please your taste buds with one meal of your choice but don’t forget only one. Try to take out some time for physical exercises at least thrice a week  Pursue the above mentioned rules and fit in your old clothes again but don’t forget the results may vary from person to person and don’t try to bully your body.  (With inputs from Yogaditya Singh Rawal, fitness trainer and Pinki, dietician))

Using natural materials to capture the nature.

by Alastair Heseltine

Gulaal Review

Myself - * * * 

Mayank Shekhar - The film suggests that whichever political set-up replaces the one that exists, the power of corruption (or the corruption of power) will ensure that we’re just as we were, if not worse. It’s the end of revolution. The thought is deeply depressing; the film, almost equally a delight.

Calvin - Mom

Calvin - Inside Outside

Garfield 13.03.2009

Sparrow Landing

Penguin books - Ad campaign

Cool advertisement campaign for Penguin books, where the idea should be “there is nothing else when you start reading books”. Click to see the larger versions.

Shekhar Gupta - The chatteranti

Dec 06, 2008

You’d be surprised to realise how it is much more likely you would get away with saying something entirely facetious and silly, but get into trouble when you try making a serious, sincere point. That, at least, has been the story of my life. At a series of public functions in Pakistan several years ago, I said Pakistan was in many ways as imperfect a dictatorship asIndia was an imperfect democracy: the central argument being that just as India had not been able to accord all its citizens all the freedoms that a democracy of this quality should have, Pakistan had not quite been able to deny their people all the freedoms that a classical dictatorship should have. That is why a reasonably free media functioned even under Musharraf, an Indian editor was able to say rude things at the launch of a newspaper (by now the widely respected Daily Times) and there was a reasonably independent judiciary; not the kind of things you would see in Saddam’s Iraq, Ahmedinejad’s Iran, or even China and Saudi Arabia.

It instantly got me in trouble. The NDA was in power then and the attack came from saffron blogs and pro-BJP columnists on well-known websites. It was as if this Indian editor had gone to Pakistan and given his country a bad name by finding faults with its democracy and merits in Pakistan’s dictatorship. What is happening right now, after theTerror attacks, and particularly in Mumbai and among our upper classes has to be seen in that context.

The Pakistanis, over the past year, have braved bullets, assassinations and dictatorial persecution to throw out a general and give themselves at least half a democracy. Whatever happens on Pakistan’s western flank and in its fundamentalist underbelly, the basic instinct of its elites, intellectual and social, its media and professional classes is to seek to strengthen their very fragile democracy, and to seek more of it. God knows, they have reasons to hate their politicians. But they have also checked out the generals for four decades and, wiser for that experience, have no intention of returning to their embrace. And exactly at the same time, the same classes in India have turned themselves into a lynch mob against the political class and, by implication, the whole democracy. The one institution the Pakistani elites are suspicious of is their military. The one institution Indian elites respect and adore today is their military. You’d wonder just what is going on.

Since TV chat shows, SMS and chain emails have become the main forum of our domestic debate and political discourse among the upper crust, it is safe to go by the evidence of what you see and read there. Any number of illiterate emails and SMSes now float around, not merely cursing politicians, but spreading utter falsehoods about the Constitution and laws. There is one, for example, that says that our Constitution (article 49-O, it specifically says) entitles us to go to a polling booth and say we do not want to vote for anyone, and if the number of such votes is higher than votes polled by the leading candidate, the election will be set aside and nobody will be elected. So that is the way to fix the political class which, realising that, has kept that article under wraps. Now most of us passed our class X Civics a long time ago, and God alone knows how, so let’s not question anybody’s knowledge of our Constitution. But none of the thousands of very well-educated, rich, successful, respectable people through whom this silly mail has passed and been forwarded, have bothered to check that venerable document. For, if they did, at least one myth would have been set at rest: Article 49 deals with something very important, but it is not the right of negative vote, but the protection of our monuments. Similar, stupid, flippant and dangerous mythologies continue to be built: that we spend more on the SPG than on the NSG, the implication being that we value the lives of our prime minister and president more than those of ordinary citizens. Nobody checked the facts, probably because if they turn out different, they may demolish the entire hypothesis. Why let facts come in the way of holy indignation?

So the same leading lights of Mumbai’s genteel classes, who never shed a tear when nearly 600 Mumbaikars lost their lives in several terrorist attacks, now walk around with candles because the threat has moved beyond local trains to rocking coffee shops and bars — incidentally, they still do not bother to light a candle in front of the CST station where more lives were lost than at both the hotels put together. More than the hypocrisy, however, it is the message they send out to their countrymen that is worthy of mention: that the political class has failed us, so please do not vote (“those who come in through our vote are more dangerous than those who come through the boat”), or exercise that right of non-vote, however mythical may it be. The virus of Mumbai’s elites seems to have even been caught by the creative classes; the latest Amul hoarding exhorts the “real” terrorist to show up, and has a neta surrounded by black cats. We have had several leading film and creative personalities demand that Pakistan, or at least its terror camps, be carpet-bombed. And on Thursday night Kabir Bedi declared on NDTV in his grave baritone that “we” have “incontrovertible” evidence of “ISI, Lashkar and Jaish” involvement and should start attacking them inside Pakistan. After all, he said, that is what the Americans are doing in Waziristan, etc, and what can the Pakistanis do except protest feebly? Further, he suggested that we learn from Mossad and carry out “targeted assassinations” of the bad guys in Pakistan. How much peace that strategy bought Israel over the decades is not a question that this intellectual of the sixties would ponder over much. In fact the only really sexy idea to come out of all this rage is that we should stop paying taxes. Great idea, but must it be confined to Mumbaikars alone? Don’t the rest of us also have issues with our government?

To be fair, it is easy to see where this rage is coming from. These attacks have brought terror to the doorstep of the classes which had long divorced and insulated themselves from our very system of politics and governance. Over the years as our governance has declined, or failed to keep pace with our society or economy, all of us learnt to become individual, sovereign republics. We send our children to private schools, get treatment only in private hospitals, have our own security in gated communities, never need to use public transport, even own our own diesel gensets to produce power, and in many parts of the country, arrange our own water supply, either through our own borewells or tankers. Then we suddenly get hit in one area — physical safety, law and order — which is still entirely in the hands of the government. Knowing how thick-skinned our politicians are, and believing all the most horrible stereotypes about them, we see no possibility of changing them. So we now look for desperate measures: compulsory military training, conscription, NSG for every city. The armed forces, we say, are the only institution that can bring about this change. Pakistan has been owned by its army since its creation and see how much worse its law and order is, how the country suffers from daily terror attacks by its own, and how large swathes of its territory are nothing but extension campuses of its most notable contribution to the modern world: a university of jihad.

Yes, our governance sucks. But the solution for the upper crust now is not to secede from it as well. Law and order is not public health, Government schooling or power supply. The whites in South Africa tried doing that and it did not work. The racist governments of the past liberally gave them automatic weapons and some of the richest homes around Johannesburg used to carry signs that said: trespassers will be shot. But it did not buy them more security. Their homes just became bunkers, or high security prisons in which they locked themselves up.

The solution lies in returning to the “system”, and challenging and changing it from within. Just as the poorer and the middle classes do around the country. As a story by Vandita Mishra in this paper’s Friday edition showed, even in these times of anger and cynicism more and more Indians are coming out to vote. They do not love their politicians, they usually vote them out. But they do it by using the power of the vote, not by disowning it. Or, look at it another way: we, in our little charmed circle, can vent our rage on chat shows and in cyberspace. But the children of our farmers and working classes will always be there, to vote out bad governments on polling day, and to get into uniforms — khaki, olive-green or black — and risk their lives fighting terrorists for our sake.

Shekhar Gupta

sg@expressindia.com